Murderous David Hickson (best thriller novels of all time TXT) 📖

state fresh meat, rhino skins and horns … you know rhino horns are highly treasured and used in Chinese medicine.”

“Makes you horny,” said Hendrik, as if he had just discovered how to make a pun, although the pun had probably been unintentional. He grinned like a schoolboy enjoying some toilet humour.

“Aphrodisiac,” said Melissa, and Hendrik glared at her for speaking out of turn. She dropped her eyelids, produced a small smile and looked up to see how he was taking it.

“I’ll Afro-dizzy you, poppie,” said Hendrik, and Kenneth thought that was funny. Roelof turned to Kenneth and said something that caused Kenneth’s laugh to die and his face to turn back to stone. I watched Chandler as he waited to resume his story, and I guessed that he was registering this moment. Roelof had spoken in an indigenous language to Kenneth, not in the way a clumsy foreigner trying to get his tongue around the uncomfortable words would, but the smooth, natural speech of someone speaking their mother tongue.

“Well, that was a mistake, of course,” resumed Chandler. “Our legitimate and squeaky-clean transportation of live animals became the subject of an investigation into rhino horn smuggling. We had to cancel the whole thing and tell them to come back home. One rhino was so upset it broke out of its cage and trampled one of the crew on its way out. The captain had to call in S and R – rhino overboard.”

Piet laughed at that, and Roelof allowed himself a hint of amusement around the corners of his tight mouth.

“He had to explain that not only had the rhino come back to life, it was now attempting to swim ashore.”

More laughter, with Hendrik making a late start with a loud guffaw.

“I don’t know whether you’ve ever seen a rhino swim, but they’re really not much good at it. It took three helicopters to get the poor animal out of the sea and back onto the ship.”

“It’s cruel,” said Melissa, “that’s what it is. Moving those animals. Just cruel.”

Chandler turned to her, and his face glowed with appreciation at her contribution.

“Cruel indeed,” he said. “But only cruel, if I may say so, Melissa, when it is not done properly.” I hoped that the introductions had been performed while I was out of the room. It would have been a serious blunder for Chandler to have addressed her by name if they had not been introduced. But Chandler didn’t make mistakes like that. “That was a debacle, I grant you,” he said, “and cruel indeed. But we learnt our lesson and never made that mistake again. That captain never sailed again. Freddy made sure of that.”

All eyes turned to me as everyone wondered how Freddy had made sure that the captain never sailed again. I gave a modest smile.

“Never sailed for us again,” I clarified. “We don’t tolerate that kind of thing. The illegal trade.”

Roelof looked as if he might pop at the word illegal. His eyes travelled the path we had laid for him again, from the papers on the table before him, to me, to Chandler and round the loop again. But he kept his mouth pinned shut.

“Won’t touch it with a bargepole,” agreed Chandler. “You have to stay legal in this business.” He settled an encouraging look on Roelof as if inviting questions, but Roelof merely nodded. Chandler wanted to say his piece about the media stories around Richard “Dicky” Mabele being exaggerations. That Dicky wasn’t in truth the kingpin of the illegal arms and wildlife smuggling business. That was all a misunderstanding. Then a smile and collection of the papers, and the seed would be planted. But Roelof didn’t take his cue, and instead we all listened to the theme tune of Star Wars playing on the tinny speaker of Piet’s mobile phone.

Piet answered just as we were building to the chorus. He put the phone to his ear and said nothing. There was a pause as he listened to a scratchy voice and we tried to remember the polite thing to do, which was probably not to look at Piet as if expecting to share in his conversation.

“The village?” he said in Afrikaans, and the scratchy voice raised its volume. Piet made some harrumphing sounds, and then he went very still. The voice at the other end of the line stopped, and we were suspended in time for a moment. “Call Jacques,” said Piet, and then he ended the call. He put the phone back into his jacket pocket. We all watched him, waiting for him to share the bad news.

“They’ve arrested Q,” he said to Roelof, who took that news fairly well, and raised an eyebrow as the only indication he had heard. “Fucking idiots,” added Piet. “We’ll get Jacques onto it, get him out. Call him now.”

“Right away,” said Roelof, and he pulled out his phone. Nobody mentioned that Piet seemed to have asked two people to make the same phone call within the space of a few seconds. Perhaps that was how big business was done.

Piet turned to us. “Going to have to go. Thank you for your kind hospitality.” He turned back to Roelof. “Get up that tower and shake those fuckers until they fix their problem. We need to get out of here.”

“Of course,” said Roelof, who seemed unperturbed by the conflicting orders he was receiving. He returned his phone to its pocket and stood up. The idea of Roelof shaking anyone was a little absurd. But he gave a small nod to Kenneth, and said something in Xhosa or Zulu, so presumably Kenneth was the one who would do the shaking. I hoped that Kenneth did not shake them so hard that our recent contribution fell out of their back pockets.

Piet turned back to us. “That shooting last Sunday was in our church,” he said. “Police have been crawling over our farm the past few days looking for the shooter. God knows why. We’re a long way from the town. It